More and more I am made to feel that Christ does not have His proper place among the children of God. He is not the object. It is either a doctrine, a dogma, a party, my experience–something beside Christ. We seem possessed with much the same spirit that actuated Peter on the mount when he […]
When the vitality of the Word of God is missing from the pulpits, the vacuum has always been filled, sometimes by eloquence, by joke-telling, by man’s philosophies, or by anecdotes. Almost anything has been pulled in to fill the void, but the godly have shunned such froth. In many ways, the setting that Savonarola spoke […]
We understand a miracle to feed 5,000 or to raise the dead, certainly, but for a lost axe? The young man knew its importance. With the axe head gone, his means of serving the Lord and His people and being able to do the things expected of him were gone as well. Now others would […]
The Big Stony River is just to the left. We are walking upstream on a well-worn game trail. Behind us, momentarily hidden in clouds, rises the massive bulk of Mount McKinley–North America’s highest peak. Miles ahead, at the moment unseen in the morning mist, in the mountains near the headwaters of the Big Stony, is […]
When life goes on well, self-sufficient complacency toward the Lord is apt to creep in. There is failure to feel the need for consistency in prayer. But when a critical issue looms, impossible to solve humanly, it results in a hurry-up call to get serious in prayer. There must be a deeper understanding of what […]
Johnny was just one of those people in life that you never forget. He was getting up in years when I first met him. Well, my first encounter with this son of Italy wasn’t really an introduction. I heard him pray at the Lord’s Supper! When he finished his prayer, I confess I looked up […]
When we moved into a new house–new to us, at least–the place needed some fixing up. A friend offered to help. He was a retired businessman who found his joy in helping others. His name was James Pirrie, but his friends called him Jamer. The first project we had worked on together was a small […]
The roots of Psalm 23 reach back deep into the rocky soil of Psalm 22. The sheep can only reach the green pastures of Psalm 23 because the Shepherd of Psalm 22 held on His way among the wasteland. The thorns are over there, and the green pastures are here, and “my” is the adoring […]
There is a prevalent idea today that though the righteous may be assured of reward in the coming world, they are generally speaking, unhappy here. The unrighteous, however, are largely free from trouble, it is suggested, whatever shadows may surround their future. If you want to lift this problem out of the mists of uncertainty […]